Really excellent post: Becoming Indigenous (thanks, Ian, for the link!) As the old system collapses under it’s own weight, things inevitably become more local. Local food, local business, local entertainment. This is a good thing. It’s important to be rooted – read this and find out why.
Category: homesteading
Caitlyn and I, before the end of February, planted a handful of spinach seeds and arugula seeds in one of our raised beds. After watering the seeds, we put a row cover over the bed and anchored it with rocks pilfered from the empty lot on the other side of the alley. I believe it’s snowed twice since then. But when I peeked under the row cover today, I found a small army of tiny arugula plants, all with their first two leaves. The spinach isn’t as dense, but it’s there too. Yipee! We can have new greens to eat, …
Happily, even though they’ve turned the site into a $3/space parking lot, we’ll be getting our local farmers’ market back at the end of April. And this year, I want to get our occasional chicken from the market, from a farmer I can talk to, maybe the guy who carries a three-ring binder with enlarged photos of his chickens getting pasture time. I definitely want to get more market eggs this year, which is probably going to mean two trips to the market, one for the eggs and one for the usual post-market picnic dinner. But back to the chicken. …
I bought 6 potatoes, a leek and a parsnip this afternoon, all of which were grown in Washington. It’s a moment of bittersweet pride. While I’m not absolutely positive, I believe these are the first non-animal (ie, dairy or meat), first non-treat (ie, Christmas oranges) produce items purchased since our local Farmers’ Market closed at the end of last October. We’ve been merrily munching along all winter on produce acquired at said market: dried peppers and carrots, canned tomatoes, frozen zucchini, stored butternut squash. I didn’t buy any potatoes at the end of the market since we had the ones …
Food ambitions for this year: get a second crop and harvest of peas – one in the spring, one in the fall prepare and freeze more pesto make a hard cheese – cheddar or gouda make blackberry jam make apricot jam put up a roasted red pepper spread and a tomato preserve come up with a scheme that will allow me to purchase pastured chicken from the farmers’ market and store it so that I can use it in small portions without cooking the whole thing and then freezing the bulk of it (which makes for yucky chicken) put up …
I had planned to add rain barrels to some of our downspouts this spring, but I think it’s going to at least wait a couple more years. In doing the research, I’ve run into too many concerns that mushroomed the project into more than I can handle right now. The biggest concern is how exactly I could use the water I collected this way. Due to the presence of bird crap on roofs, most resources were pretty clear that rain barrel water isn’t potable. I didn’t look into what filtering would be required to make it ok for humans to …